Last night, the Lasalle Vipers fell one goal short of a comeback win vs the Kitchener-Waterloo Siskins. Due to the realignment of the conferences, KW is now in the Western Conference with the Vipers. This was the first out of two times KW will visit the Vollmer this season. The Vipers did comeback from being down 2-0 but unfortunately couldn’t find one more goal in the back of the net to complete the win losing 3-2.
In the first period, neither team was able to score until the 16:26 mark when the Siskins put one on the board. Dante Bertolin made 13 saves on net while KW goalie Nolan Chartrand stopped all 7 shots from the Vipers. One penalty was called to a Siskins player for slashing, but the powerplay was unable to take advantage of the two minutes.
The second period was very busy as it began with a penalty being handed out to Nick Graniero. It was only 23 seconds of even strength later when Lavigne of the Vipers and Ensom of the Siskins were both called off for roughing. This was Michael Lavigne’s first game back with the Vipers after spending the preseason with the Windsor Spitfires. He spent last season with the Vipers, as well as playing three games for the Spitfires. At 10:55 Jak Thiessen was called off for a high sticking which resulting in a powerplay goal for KW. Down 2-0, at 13:12, Zach Vaillancourt helped cut the KW lead in half by scoring his second goal of the season. With 40 seconds left in the period, Jak Thiessen scored a beautiful goal that made it 2-2.
Heading into the third with high hopes, it only took Kitchener-Waterloo 17 seconds to score their third goal which later would be ruled the game winning goal. At 4:37, 4 penalties were given out. Owen Findlay and Zach Vaillancourt as well as two KW players were all given two minute roughing penalties. Within the last 10 minutes of the contest, two more penalties were given to the Vipers and one more to the Siskins. Running out of time, the Vipers were not able to score. Final score 3-2.
Tomorrow, we head to St. Thomas to face the Stars. Puck drop is at 7:30 and it can be streamed on FloHockey.
Our next home game is Wednesday October 2nd vs the Caledonia Corvairs.
